Science Olympiad competes in invitational

Walnut competed against 37 schools across Southern California in 29 sections such as Circuit Lab, Designer Genes, Dynamic Planet and Forensics. One new event in the competition was Codebusters. Groups of three were given an encrypted message that they had to solve with advanced ciphers. Walnut won Designer Genes and Dynamic Planet but did not score well in the other events.

“It was cool and fun, but when we got to awards, it was sad because we didn’t score well. Also, it was kind of competitive because people studied for weeks for this and really [wanted] to perform well,” member sophomore James Lin said.

The invitational competition helps members prepare for the Los Angeles Regional Competition by giving them experience and practice for their events on Saturday, Feb. 27 at Occidental College.

“Our team didn’t have very much time for preparation. It’s definitely to harder for us get accustomed to the competitions,” treasurer senior Karen Liu said. “Although we didn’t perform extremely well, invitationals [are] mainly used for practice, and we historically performed better in regionals.”